Thursday, April 19, 2012

Dense Reduction "Aina Exchange" and Knit Prism (OMM)

The Offices of Moore & Moore is a label I know nothing about and I like it that way. One evening I came home from work to discover a package containing two tapes housed in attractive, what I call "books on tape," cases with obtuse art addressed to me from OMM. The first cassette I popped in my player was by a duo who call themselves Dense Reduction. The album, Aina Exchange, features a picture of a curious cat (named Zeus according to the credits) in a dark cluttered living room or office space on its cover. This gives little indication of the noise sculpting contained within. I was utterly mystified by the artwork and its playful, almost Jandekian photo. Dense Reduction's music isn't particularly playful, though its not aggro-freaky either. I loved the music for the snapping hiss and single focused density. The second side of the tape wasn't as packed with sound info, but it made me appreciate the overall effort. There's only 40 of these bad boys out there so I suggest some investigation is in your future.

Time is funny thing. It can move fast or appear to crawl by at a snail's pace. Knit Prism seem to prefer the slow side of life. Sub Sub Sub sonic textures dominate both sides of the thirty plus minute affair here. The tape has two side long compositions, titled "Prosper the Copper Crow" and "Appropriate Measures," respectively. Each composition has keyboard drones buried in the slow sludge murk of low end frequencies. This definitely isn't speeding music. This is narco-haze and I found it fit a late night listen a little too well. It creeped me out, but not in knife toting coked up clown kinda way. The artwork for this cassette, also contained in a case similar to that of the Dense Reduction release, features crayon and pencil drawings of random objects such as a jar of mustard, reading glasses, an ashtray, and feet. Don't ask me what it all means.

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It should be obvious, this is a webzine we created to put cassette releases and the format of cassette itself on a pedestal. We are not doing this to be some sort of cassette snob, more-DIY-than-thou elitists or anything. We are doing it because all the formats that sound can be presented on are exciting and provide unique ways of shaping the listeners experience... so it is a shame that any one of these formats would fall by the wayside. Cassettes provide a listening experience that is similar to vinyl because of the intermission/moment of pause created by changing sides of the tape, but can be of almost any length between 30 seconds a side to an hour. Tapes can also be listened to in a car or while jogging.While today this format helps keep the home label alive, its almost a dream to remember that once every musician from Michael Jackson to REM had their releases on cassette. Cassettes were a legitimate format, not just for the DIY underground. Maybe we (thats you too) are the last guardians of this format. Maybe someone, someday will popularize cassettes again. In the meantime we keep the reels turning. A little offering because at least there are a few of you that know there is more than one god of this land.